


Certainties between strangers

by xcrossheartedx



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angsty with a bittersweet soft porn ending, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by I Am Terrified by IAMX, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27381217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xcrossheartedx/pseuds/xcrossheartedx
Summary: Gellert's drunk and in denial of his own feelings and remorses, he gets as bitter as he could ever be. Albus' tears and pain leads them both towards giving themselves to their deepest shared desire. Flesh becomes a more intricate tool than a time turner. This is angst at its best for the sake of that kind of suggestive smut.~Amongst other details that I better leave between me and Em —trying to protect my dignity in case I didn't achieve them, lol— this was mainly driven and inspired by the song I Am Terrified by IAMX.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Certainties between strangers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yumbledore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yumbledore/gifts).



> To my dearest Em, that fills my days with laughter and joy ♡. I truly hope this is up to your expectations.

It had been twenty-two and a half hours since Albus have last cried holding the pendant so tightly into his hand that he ended up bruising his own palm with both the metal and his fingernails. He thought on how you can take back what is yours. How you can pluck lint from a carpet and tuck it into your pocket. He thought on how as a person, you cry about many things and most of the time, you are unsure of why, but in reality, the only way to explain it was by coming to terms with the fact that you are leaking, not unlike a faucet or a birthday party balloon that once used to hold the air from the lungs of your soulmate. He had counted the hours, pocketed the lint, thought of his hands intertwined with Gellert’s and contemplated them running through the ends of his golden hair. His mind never left his youth, although his body had abandoned it long time ago. That aged body still crying about the same thing, hoping one day all got better and Gellert hadn’t left him.

It was the same. They were the same. Gellert had always been the same. Until they were not and the balloon broke. His pockets had holes and his fingers slip through: why did he even forget about what drew them together in the first place? He tried to find comfort in the fact that it wasn’t his fault and maybe, for him, a little more crying would do. Maybe it would take two thousand three hundred and fifty-two metal buckets of tears to come to terms with the fact that the rhythm he had been listening to for decades had been Gellert’s memories, knocking at his shoulders, tugging on his ribs, terrifying his very core. He was just a man who constantly tinkered with things he could not fix about the man he loved. He knew of decisions and regrets, fumbling through his teeth, getting caught in his throat. He knew about time, minutes and seconds. Once Gellert had told him the spaces between seconds were the loneliest because they are often forgotten. Since that moment, they both thought about each other most then. If only they knew about that. _Dry your eyes, run a hand beneath your nose: it’s okay. Stop being so terrified._

He took a few steps around his office, one hand with his wand and the other grasping the pendant. With a delicate movement of his wand, he suspended the pendant towards a cabinet with such a slow flow, that the motion hinted his resistance of letting it go. Endeavoring with the battle of his own thoughts he stood in front of a mirror and fixed his hair and tie — his cheeks flushed a bit whilst he flashed an artless smile thinking on how his own vanity showed off blatantly through that attempt of looking the best he could. His youthful coquetry was abruptly interrupted when he remembered the lack of that good excuse he needed. An excuse that was able to allow him to justify his presence in front of Gellert and also, trick his own mind by giving a rational motive that could help him hide the viscerality and self-centeredness causality of the decision he had already made. The terror took hold of his eyes again and he felt his palms sweat a little. He suddenly became afraid that he displayed the same befuddled astonishment whilst blinking into Gellert’s eyes, as if time had just went backwards. He was completely terrified of the possibility of instantly getting drunk on Gellert's scent and that it would lead him to indulge in his deepest desires. Yielding to those desires that had hunted his nights for many years would be the same ones that he’d later regret. He was terrified but he was more desperate to see him.

//

Albus’ eyes fluttered shut for a brief moment allowing himself to devour the cold mist through his lungs right before taking a step closer to Nurmengard castle. He opened his eyes and stared mesmerized at the snowed beauty of the construction. It was monumental, magnificent, sovereign, elevated. _So as Gellert has always been._ Albus muttered bitterly but softly through his teeth. With a slick movement, he pointed his wand towards the tower and casted a non corporeal patronus with a simple message: _I’m down here, is it safe that I go up or should I wait for you at the front door? – A._ He shuddered nervously, hoping his message would pass as effortless and elegant enough.  
  
Gellert’s mouth tasted like absinth, maybe just a little too much. He felt his head dizzy, but that sensation allowed him a release over his body – he finally felt it much more lightweight. He felt in control, he always was in control. To Gellert, it was always a wonder how this body, his skin, was able to hold in all the parts of himself. Legs that only knew how to run, how to leave. His heart —that clumsy, bloody thing— that only knew how to hold its hands up in surrender when thinking about Albus, and never in defense. He felt disgust over his useless organ with no sense of direction, going on strike each time he thought of Albus’ pretty cerulean eyes but always indifferent with a small child laughing or a grieving widow crying. As if his heart was that interval during music, long enough to lend itself to any possibility but short enough not to offer almost any chance to change.  
  
With his slightly blurred and numbed senses, his eyes became somewhat blinded by a sudden light that entered through his window. He almost anticipated it was a message from Albus and he let himself feel his presence as his words stroked him like a flash of lightning. Deep inside he really wished that when Gellert opened his front door, Albus spoke the words… _we need to leave now, darling_. And that they would go back to Godric’s Hollow, grasping at his youth days all over again and that this time, it would last forever. He could still remember the smell of fresh cut grass and cottage fire-smoke of the place in where they used to recite love and magic as if they were made of that and not of weak flesh, light bones and arteries.That thought made him uneasy and annoyed, the least thing Albus deserved of him was his vulnerability. He let the outrage sink into his gut and with his already heavy eyelids, he poured another absinthe glass and drank it abruptly before running towards his front door, unable to notice his almost inconspicuous grin.  
  
Gellert opened the door and and felt a gut-punch sensation as his relentless mismatched eyes met Albus’ deep gaze.  
  
"What are you doing here? What do you want?” Gellert unapologetically hissed almost dragging his words with the least effort he could.  
  
“I-I… need to talk to you about something. Can I come in?” Albus’ euphoric happiness to see him again immediately felt ephemeral and it was suddenly replaced by a heartbreaking happiness that could’ve admitted crying.  
  
“Unless you have brought back what you took from me and apologize I don’t want to hear a word from you, Dumbledore.” he made sure he pronounced his last name sharply and unfamiliar, with as much mockery and disdain as he could.  
  
“Oh, Merlin… have you been drinking, Gellert? I’m going to go inside, I’m freezing and I need to talk properly with you.” With a concerned look, Albus walked right through the door frame following Gellert inside the castle. His feeling of distress gradually started to grow the second he got inside.  
Albus couldn't help turning his head around in every direction with a mesmerized gaze towards that imposing castle. He suddenly felt overwhelmed by the familiarity he found in the details of decoration and even the subtle aroma that the space gave off, it made his stomach tingle, the whole majestic room was Gellert himself. If only Gellert hadn't stopped behind him and his alcoholic breath hadn't brought him back to reality, perhaps he could have started shedding tears of nostalgia and profound longing.  
  
“Was machst du hier? Entweder sprech schon, oder geh!” Gellert pointed out violently, without even realizing he wasn’t speaking English.  
  
A bittersweet sensation ran through Albus' body, Gellert's German came out of his mouth only when his most visceral emotions overtook him. _Meine Liebe, genug!, du bist brillant, ich liebe dich_. He remembered words and the passion that overflowed his eyes when saying them. He remembered how his heart spun like a pinwheel that knew nothing of gravity and never stopped spinning. He remembered and a hurricane of emotions engulfed him. Emotions he had been trying to bottle up for more than 20 years.  
  
“My German is rustier than ever, Gellert. I don’t know what you’re saying but I know that tone of yours and I didn’t came to pick a fight with you. I actually don’t even know why I came but I’m not leaving until you sober up at least a little. I haven’t seen you like this since that night you broke into my room with that bottle of firewhiskey, do you remember?” Albus surrendered to his internal struggle on wanting to appear in control of his motives and emotions, his attempt lasted even less than he already suspected. He decided to play the only card he recognized as certain of their past, the one that crumbled Gellert like a sugar cube in hot tea, his vulnerability. Nostalgia became his safe bet. There was no more strategy, he just needed Gellert. He needed **his** Gellert more than ever.  
  
Gellert glanced over at Albus without showing any trace of emotion, he looked at him almost as if he was looking at a stranger that spoke to him in an unknown language. He turned his back on him and walked slowly towards a black and shiny marble staircase. He took a few steps up and disdainfully looked back again to meet Albus’ eyes "I have no idea what you're saying. Please close the door and don't ever come back here making a fool of yourself. I'm going to grant you the favor of forgetting this pathetic scene” Gellert scoffed and after a brief pause he added "or better said, avoid reaching a higher state of miserability than you already did the moment you took the vial that you perfectly know it cannot be destroyed. Too bad I can't kill you right now since you already came up here crawling, consider it as a beautiful gesture of pity.” he pinpointed with the most cruel and ruthless laughter.  
  
Abus felt his heart drop to the floor and his stomach collapsing. Those were the cruelest words Gellert had ever spoken to him, it was like if he had ripped his heart out raw. A sharp pain in his chest prevented him from fainting. He shut his eyes wishing that when he opened them it had all been a nightmare, but when he did all he could do was drown himself into the sea of tears that seized his now paler face. And now he was following Gellert’s steps, walking right behind him with a lump in his throat and trying unsuccessfully to fight back his tears. He wanted to yell him _stop_ , yell _please stop hurting me like this_ , yell him _please_ , _I know you still love me_. But not a single word came out of his dry mouth. He was slipping behind, slipping into shadow, slipping into fog. Slipping until the top of his head disappeared under the water. He was drowning in pain, naively hoping Gellert would come at his rescue at any moment.  
  
Suddenly they were inside Gellert’s bedroom. Gellert stood up facing an open window with his hands in his face trying to shut his ears of Albus’ sobbing. It felt like torture. At that time he would have traded twenty-four hours of nonstop cruciatus curse over his body in order to make it stop.  
  
“Y-you… want me dead? Have you reduced me to this? Now I’m less than nothing to you that the only thing that’s stopping you from murdering me is a cold piece of metal? Look me in the eyes and tell me that you hate me, tell me you don’t love me anymore. For the first time in this years I’m begging you to get me out of my misery and admit you never did and that you never cared. You just used me…” he asked with the last straw of strength left, in a thin and broken voice.  
  
Gellert turned around and looked at him. Lack of control was beginning to show through his eyes. Inadvertently, Gellert’s eyes started shedding tears, shoulders shaking, body rocking, slowly and quickly to a rhythm that so easily could’ve been compared to a building collapsing violently and abruptly by an earthquake. It could have been loss or abandonment. It could have been his bloodstream running out of absinthe and his heart finally acknowledging his profound longing for the man that was standing in front of him. Those blue eyes, unriddling his entire being. He realized they had been walking in opposite directions, looking for the other.  
  
“Stop this, Albus! You sold us for a miserable life hidden safely inside your own castle. You’re talking about love as if you’ve done better whilst you let me rot in in that prison cell for six months. You knew they were torturing me and I was willing to die in an attempt to protect our memories, just to protect those poignant reminders of the only thing that’s made me feel I belonged to something higher than this miserable world we were supposed to fix together. And then you took it, you stole it from me. You wanted to destroy it, you still want to…” he struggled to finish his sentences, almost running out of breath in between them. He kept gasping for air, trying to hold as much oxygen as he could in his lungs in the middle of his tears, already defeated by his emotions like he’d never been in decades.  
  
Albus reached over him and wiped his tears tenderly with his fingers, then gently holding his face between both his hands said almost in a whisper “I didn’t took it, I didn’t asked him to take it away from you and I never planned to do anything with it except holding it every night in my bed while I cried my heart out of missing you. I hoped that it would be the reason for you to reach me but the days passed and you never came. How could you find the strength to feel it so close to you every day, Gell? I broke into tears every time I held it into my hand. Everything came back to me. You, how you used to hold me. Our letters, our plans. The warmth of your...—”  
  
Gellert sushed him with a desperate kiss, it didn’t took a fraction of a second for Albus to melt into their embrace and responded in kind. He was suddenly flooded with desire and deepened their lips touch, sliding his hands through Gellert’s golden hair. It was almost a frantic embrace. In a small breathy moan with tears still rolling through his ivory face, Gellert pronounced against Albus’ lips “ich liebe dich, und ich werde immer”.  
  
Suddenly, their clothes started being tossed on the floor—some items even ripped violently in the process. Albus became dizzy by Gellert’s still alcoholic breath whilst kissing his lips and Gellert sobered up by drinking each droplet of sweat over Albus’ body. Gellert didn’t remember exactly if his heart landed confused by Albus’ words or he just achingly wanted to be inside of him. They wanted to forget and they wanted to remember. Their sheets landed on the opposite side of hatred as they gave themselves indiscriminately on the right side of the bed.  
  
The room became filled with both Albus and Gellert’s panting. Hot and musky air being outpoured through their bare-skinned bodies suddenly overflowed the entire room. Their moans simultaneously mixed but independently distinguishable oozed with a unique and delicious cadence, as if they were made for each other. They melted into oneself. They traced their fingertips on each other's body, remembering and memorizing each new detail granted by the passage of time.  
Albus’ hands were speckled with dried hopes and when he ran them across his lover’s back, he claimed to regain the universe back and all the magic of the earth along Gellert’s shoulder blades. He sighed with the most joyful lust. Gellert felt like if he couldn't recognize his own body anymore. He had placed his lungs next to the window just in case he forgot what air felt like to inhale. He left his veins directly above the entrance so he could feel every pulse, but he was only able to notice pure ecstasy escaping himself. He carefully placed his heart next to the drawer, trying to set it in front of his dignity so he could see. But his dignity was nowhere to be found. They had always been one, not two.  
  
Before you awake from making love, the morning rays are supposed to murmur to the moon how to figure out where the sun's petals must rise—in this case, the sunlight only came to highlight the prize of a million teasing moments blind. Gellert thought about how not even the best of all his speeches, of all his stories was comparable to the one he only knew about navigating Albus’ pale skin and bare soul. Albus finally realized the key to break that terror spell he had been enduring throughout all of those years, had always been its own inception... Gellert.


End file.
